“Great,” I said.
Harvey had traded one set of addictions for a healthier one.
“What can I do for you?” Flo asked.
Unlike Harvey, she had not found a substitute for the loss of her husband. She bathed in the smoothness of expensive whiskey. I could hear it in her voice.
“It’s me, Lew,” I said.
“You find the kid?”
“She’s okay,” I said.
“I screwed up, Lewis,” she said. “I let Beryl go, let her get killed. I’d like to find her bastard husband and blow a hole through his head, but that won’t bring her back.”
“I’m sorry, Flo,” I said. “I shouldn’t have brought you into this.”
“I live with more, maybe even with worse.”
“Can I come over tonight, late, maybe eleven?”
“Come ahead. Something on your mind?”
“Something’s on my mind,” I said. “I’m going to offend you now.”
“Offend.”
“Have something to eat, take a shower and-”
“Be sober,” she continued. “Okay, but that’s an agreement, not a promise. I’ve learned not to make promises.”
“See you at eleven if I’m not in jail,” I said.
“Expecting to be?”
“I’ll let you know if I am.”
I hung up. Harvey was singing softly now to the numbers on his screen. I didn’t know what he was singing.
I made one more call. It was almost six. Detective Etienne Vivaise was still on duty. He was busy. I asked the woman who answered the call to tell him Lewis Fonesca was on the phone and wanted to talk to him about Tony Spiltz.
“One moment,” she said.
Vivaise was on the phone within seconds.
“Fonesca,” he said. “You want to come in and confess to a pair of murders? You doing a murder a day? Forget it. My mind’s on something else. You know something about the Spiltz murder? It’s got something to do with… hold it. Beryl Tree?”
“I think they were both killed by the same person,” I said.
“Do I come to you or you come to me?”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said. “I’m not far.”
“Ten minutes,” he said and hung up.
I touched Harvey’s shoulder, said I’d call him latter.
“An hour, two tops,” he said.
I headed for police headquarters on Ringling. The blue Buick followed. I wondered what he made of my route. My guess, based on my brief encounter with him, was that he was not high on imagination. That was probably his greatest asset.
The cop at the desk asked me if I knew the way. I told him I did. He waved me on. In the room outside of Vivaise’s office, a scaffolding and a paint-stained plank suspended between the rungs of two ladders stood against one wall. Desks, file cabinets, chairs were covered with paint-splattered white canvas drop cloths. One wall had been painted the exact color it had been before. Before the painters had quit for the day, they had gotten halfway finished with the second wall in front of the scaffold.
The only uncovered piece of furniture in the room was a bench against a wall. Two men, both black, were seated on the bench, handcuffed together. One man was in his late thirties, groomed, suited, with a neat tie and trim mustache: Eddie Murphy without an attitude. His eyes were closed. The young man he was handcuffed to was short, wearing jeans and blue polo shirt. He didn’t look like anyone I could think of. He saw me, turned his head.
Inside his office, behind his desk, sat Vivaise in a position from which he could see the two men on the bench through his open door. Vivaise motioned me in, pointed to the chair across from his desk and rubbed his forehead.
“Headache,” he said. “I live with them. Allergies, migraine, whatever’s possible, I have it.”
“You look it,” I said, sitting. “I met someone else today who suffers from migraines, John Pirannes.”
Vivaise stopped rubbing.
“Let’s talk Spiltz first,” he said. “You want a coffee?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
“Sometimes caffeine is good for a headache. Cola, coffee, pills. Hey,” he shouted over my shoulder, “where are you going?”
From behind me a voice said,
“We got to piss.”
“Both of you,” Vivaise said wearily.
“Both.”
“It can wait. Sit down. Your lawyer’s on the way. When he shows up, I’ll let him walk you to the toilet.”
Vivaise turned his attention back to me.
“So, who killed Spiltz? And how do you know?”
“Dwight Handford,” I said. “Killed his wife. Killed Spiltz.”
“You have some evidence, a witness, a story?”
The door to the outer office behind us opened and Vivaise shouted, “You’re right on time, Charlie. Your clients are having bladder-retention problems. You want to walk them down the hall? I called the county attorney’s office. They’re sending someone.”
“Who?” the voice behind me asked.
“I think it’s Angie Fairchild,” Vivaise said.
“Good,” said Charlie. “I’ll walk my clients down the hall and confer.”
The door behind me opened again and then closed. Beyond it I could hear the handcuffed men talking. And then there was silence.
“Story,” said Vivaise.
“You saw my file on Beryl and her daughter.”
“Got it right here,” he said.
“A street pimp on the North Trail named Tilly told me Dwight Handford sold Adele to Pirannes. Tilly was in no position to argue. I went to Pirannes to check out his tale. I found Adele there. No Pirannes. She said some men came during the night. She was in the bedroom. She heard a shot. She came out. Spiltz was dead. The men were gone. Adele was in shock, shaking. I got her something to eat, turned her over to her therapist and caseworker. She’s in Juvenile now.”
“Go on,” Vivaise said.
“It was stupid. I panicked. I should have called you when I found the body, but all I could think of was taking care of the girl,” I said. “I realized my mistake an hour or so ago. I called you. I’m here.”
“Who was the other guy with you at Pirannes’s place?”
“Other guy?”
“Old guy with long hair wearing a yellow coat,” said Vivaise. “I’ve got the report right here, pulled it when you called. Hard copy. Guard at the gate said a sad little balding guy, which I assume was you, and a tall old guy with long hair wearing a coat in eighty-degree weather tried to get in to see Pirannes this morning. When a couple of residents reported seeing these suspicious characters, the guard called the police. We went to Pirannes’s apartment, found Spiltz’s body. Between you and me with no tape rolling, the departure of Tony Spiltz from the earth was not a great loss to humanity. Thirty-eight arrests here and in New Jersey and New York. Spent time in Attica twice, once for racketeering, once for conspiracy to commit murder. If someone asks, I’ll contribute ten bucks for his funeral. Who was the old guy?”
“The guard made a mistake,” I said.
“The guard made a mistake?” Vivaise asked. “That’s what you’re going to say when you make a statement on the record, the guard made a mistake?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll ask my lawyer. If there was an old man in a slicker with me, which there wasn’t, he might have an arrest record. He isn’t part of this, if he existed, which at this point he doesn’t.”
“I’m having trouble following you,” Vivaise said. “It’s been a long day. I need coffee. Our coffee isn’t all that bad if the pot was emptied recently and someone made a fresh batch. Sure you don’t want any?”
“I’ll take some,” I said.
Vivaise rose heavily and left me sitting and thinking while he went out. I came up with nothing new while he was gone, but he wasn’t gone very long.
“Luck,” he said, handing me a large white foam cup. The cup was hot. The liquid black. “Fresh pot. I sent Charlie and his clients downstairs to wait. I wanted to give you my full attention.”
He went behind his desk, sat and sipped his coffee. I put my cup down and looked at him.
“You were talking about mistakes you made,” he said. “You were talking about John Pirannes.”
“I went to see John Pirannes,” I said.